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Episode 786: The Longest-Awaited Listener Email Answers
Date December 18, 2015 Summary Ben and Sam banter about a fictitious player from TV, then answer listener emails about Mike Trout, opt-ops, paying players not to play, persuading a parent to value Barry Bonds, and more. Topics * Opt-outs for pitchers and hitters * Barry Bonds' greatness * Mike Trout trade value hypothetical * Tall baseball players * Playing players not to play * Team internal WAR metrics Intro Warren Zevon, "Mama Couldn't Be Persuaded" Outro Blur, "To the End" Banter * A listener in the Facebook group posted a picture of career stats from a fake Venezuelan baseball player in the show Madam Secretary. * The player has 9,334 career plate appearances but 9,292 at-bats. He somehow managed to walk/reach on HBP only 42 times but still have a career .441 OBP. * He has a career .361 AVG with 209 home runs and 413 doubles. Email Questions * Cory: "How does the value of an opt-out differ between a pitcher and a hitter?" * Anthony: "Help me persuade my dad Barry Bonds was a great baseball player and deserves to be in the Hall of Fame." * Alex: "Today, if you had the chance, would you trade Trout for two identical copies of Jose Fernandez using their actual contract statuses?" * John: "So I was thinking about the Greinke signing and about how he's openly admitted in the past that he signs with the team that pays him the most money and that he would gladly sign with a last place team if that team paid him the most. I don't fault any ballplayer for going for the most money but it got me thinking: how much would some insane billionaire have to pay Greinke or any other star free agent to never play baseball again? In other words, an insane billionaire offers Greinke a contract that pays him a certain amount of money per year for a certain period of years and Greinke can only get that money if he does not play baseball for any professional team during that time. The contract would take Greinke through what would be his age 38 season or his age 42 season or whatever. Assuming that Greinke and other star players love to compete and all that, how much money would it take for them to give up their livelihood, potentially for what remains of the prime of their careers?" * Ben: "You mentioned that most teams are believed to have a WAR equivalent metric that they employ. How different do you think the different metrics can get from each other and the WAR calculations we fans have access to? I ask this because as I follow the offseason analysis I'll see a site do analysis of how a team's WAR at a given position has moved and at what cost as a pretty basic means of evaluating transactions. What I wonder is how much we can glean about a team specific WAR from their transactions? For example one way to interpret the Pirates' offseason so far is that they've managed to stay about level in overall team WAR while shedding significant salary but I wonder if the team's offseason also tells us that their metrics were even lower on Pedro Alvarez and Neil Walker and they view the turnover on those positions as net gains even before considering the dollars saved." Play Index * Inspired by tall pitching prospects, Sam uses the Play Index to look up information about tall (6 feet 5 inches or taller) pitching prospects. * In 1933 a player who is 6 feet 5 inches would have been the tallest player in MLB. * Many of the tall pitchers in early baseball history had the nickname of 'slim'. * In 2011 there were 123 pitchers that were over 6 feet 5 inches tall, a record. There have been at least 100 pitchers of this height ever year since 2006. Notes * Ben jokes that Anthony should threaten to cut off his dad from any grandkids in the event that he doesn't change his mind on Barry Bonds. * Ben and Sam would rather have one Mike Trout going forward than two of Jose Fernandez. Links * Effectively Wild Episode 786: The Longest-Awaited Listener Email Answers Category:Episodes Category:Email Episodes